


she wrote it out in letraset

by Anonymous



Category: W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon Compliant, F/F, In a way, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21622648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: I wanted to know if we’re an inevitability.
Relationships: Cornelia Hale/Irma Lair
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39
Collections: Anonymous, Fortune Favors: Round One— Rider-Waite-Smith





	she wrote it out in letraset

**Author's Note:**

> this wasn't what i had in mind when i signed up, but i'm glad it's what came out! big thanks to m & z for their tarot knowledge and helping with the interpretation.
> 
> card used: page of wands, reversed.

When the numbers are broken down, Cornelia realizes, they spend more time having wings than in their own houses. Chasing, catching, playing dress-up in their guardian outfits, listening to orders — it takes more of her time than school and normal life ever did, and they’ve spent all of it together, the five of them. They’ve grown into each other.

That realization plagues her. She wakes up with it, turns it in her head during breakfast, during classes, during her calls to her parents and Lillian, an unsolvable Rubik’s cube. It follows her as she packs her bags on a Tuesday morning. She ticks the items off her list, when she's ready. The easy part: one backpack, a small suitcase, a laptop bag. The hard part: a call to Irma. The laptop will probably not work in Meridian, but taking it with her still makes more sense than her not choosing face-to-face.

Irma, who listens to her for all of two seconds when she picks up. “Did you finally learn to make prank calls in your old age, Corny?” She says it lightly, but there’s an impossible silence in the background that’s making Cornelia wary.

“I’m not joking,” she says. “It’d be good for us, I think. We’ve been stuck with each other since we were fourteen. Look at it like a vacation!”

The sound of water splashing comes as a response. Ah, so she’s in the bath again. “A two-year long vacation. A two-year long vacation for those of us on _Earth_ , I can’t even begin to calculate how long it’ll be for you. You could just say you want us to stop.”

“If you think that’s what I meant-”

“I know it is what you meant.” Flippant. _Because the other option is-_ “You couldn’t possibly expect me to just wait around for two years. What about the guardians?”

It’s _still_ not what Cornelia meant. At 21, she knows on an intellectual level she’s leading a blessed life. Grew up in a good family, attended a good school, is attending a good college still in her home town, with all her friends still there. It’s kind of wherein the problem lies; she’s been as prone to spending her Saturday mornings on an ice rink seven years ago as she is now, as easily found eating duck blood soup with Hay Lin at her parents’ restaurant twice a month. Irma is the same.

“I think we should be smart. You can call Orube! The dream team has survived with one person out before, and you can’t deny that we’ve been doing the same things over and over again.” Cornelia sighs. “Don’t you ever just want to stop?”

“I like being special, and I want to be,” Irma quotes at her, a repeat from when they were sixteen, always the same. “But I hope you find what you’re looking for in Meridian.”

She hangs up. Cornelia thinks that the most unfair part is that she means it.

  
~*~*~

  
Elyon welcomes her with as much grace as expected. She’s grown in the years, too, even though she doesn’t look it. Her arms are open the minute Cornelia stands outside the palace, enveloping her. She ushers her inside and shows her her room and gives her her favorite meridean snack, both a friend and a queen in every way. Majestic in appearance and behavior and personality, if not for the fact she’s still barely reaching Cornelia’s chin. 

  
~*~*~

  
Cornelia writes letters to the other three. They’re short, but she sends them before she can talk herself out of it.

Meridian’s calm. Every breath she takes is fresher than the previous one, the nature surrounding the palace has folliage thick enough to cover half of the window area in her room. There’s still restoration being done, the destruction Phobos left behind still visible, still felt, but the people in the streets greet her like an old friend.

She feels like a fraud sometimes. They only know the heroic fragments of her, the artwork the stained glass creates and not its edges.

  
~*~*~

  
Other times she wouldn’t even remember she’s from a world that’s not this one, if not for her weekly dimension-jump to Earth to call her family. She jumps in every place she can think of, every capital of the planet she can remember off the top of her head and those she can’t, anywhere but Sheffield. She knows it’d pull her in the second her feet touched the pavement, as cracked and in need of repair as the cement was.

In one of those jumps, her phone displays a text from Irma. It’s a video of her trying to play Britney Spears’ Toxic on guitar, every chord straying further from the original song. Cornelia is aware she was probably drunk when filming this. She sends an emoji with its tongue stuck out and _I could post this and once it goes viral I’ll fund us all to go to the Bahamas._

She reads Irma’s response next time she’s on this world, a simple _wow u suck_. To that, all Cornelia can do is forward the video to the group chat.

She helps Elyon with what she can. In an ironic turn of events which she definitely foresaw, Cornelia traded spending all her time with one set of friends for another.

“I was trying to be courteous,” Elyon starts on a bright and too hot afternoon, while they’re tending to the eastern garden, “but I haven’t figured it out yet. Why are you here?”

Cornelia can hear Irma’s voice in her head, laughing in her face and telling her ' _Ha! She’s kicking you out!'_ Her mind’s Irma needs to shut up as much as real Irma does. “It’s meant to be a stress-free break from the stressful life of being a VIG. That stands for Very Important Guardian, which is me.”

Elyon hums and grins at her. It feels like a mocking hum. “Always thought you were more of a city girl than a remote palace one. If you had asked me half a year ago, I’d have said there’s no way _the_ Cornelia Hale would spend more than a weekend here willingly. Not that I’m not glad my best friend is here.”

  
~*~*~

  
The worst part is, Elyon is right. From the projected two years in Earth time break, Cornelia lasts less than three months. In her defense, those three months were at least closer to a year in Meridian time. 

She spends her first week back holed up in her house and hugging her mom and dad and even Lillian a probably unhealthy amount. It’s the middle of the semester, but she drafts about five applications to out-of-province colleges. None of them are further than four hours away, but all of them provide enough distance for her to feel the difference.

She invites Irma over nine days after she returns, and Irma arrives within twenty minutes, holding tupperware full of cookies.

“I was out already,” she tells Cornelia when she opens the door, in lieu of greeting. Three of the buttons on her jacket are in the wrong button hole, but she won’t tell her that.

“You don’t seem surprised I’m here,” Cornelia says, making room for her to enter. 

Irma makes beeline for the kitchen table to set the cookies down. “I knew you wouldn’t last as long as you thought you would. But I was wrong on the duration, so now I owe Taranee twenty bucks.”

“You bet on me?”

Irma just flashes her her widest smile.

Cornelia scoffs. “Some nice friends I have.”

“I brought cookies! What more could you want?”

  
~*~*~

  
By 3AM, they’re holed up in Cornelia’s bed, tangled under sheets and blankets and marathoning an absurd amount of D-list actor movies.

“Why did you go?” Irma asks her as the male love interest in the movie slips and falls on his face for what is probably the fifth time.

“Well. Don’t laugh,” Cornelia says warningly, “but. I wanted to know if we’re an inevitability, or if I'm taking the easy way out.”

Saying don’t laugh, of course, had the opposite of the intended result. Irma tries to hold it in, bless her heart, ends up with her head thrown back against the pillows, the sound of her giggles reverberating against the lilac walls.

“Gosh, you’re so dramatic,” she says, once she manages to stop herself and take a breath.

Cornelia agrees with her, in theory. In practice, she shoves her off the bed and onto the carpet, and gets a stuffed lion thrown to her face for her trouble, and then a kiss to her nose.

And then a kiss from Irma to her thumb. And a press of her thumb to Cornelia’s lips, light. Cornelia moves Irma’s bangs off her forehead, making sure to be light in her touch as well. 

It is a return, and it is a promise. Both too tentative and too bold, too forward. Exactly what she needs.


End file.
